I have had this Choctaw Rivercane basket for a couple of years now. It is 16 inches high (8 inches is the basket and the rest is the handle) and about 8 inches in diameter, and is double walled. It is woven using the "Twill" weave and the colors are still vibrant after all these years. I would approximate the age of this basket as being made between 1930 and 1940.

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starsthatsell4us, 2 years agoI have always loved Native American Baskets as they are such fun to decorate a home with. They add a special feeling and spirit to a room. It's hard not to be addicted to collecting them. There's nothing to compare to a Native artisan's skillfully woven basket made years ago. They took pride in their fine work. You can tell by the quality, unlike the newer imports that are flooding the market these days from Asia and other countries.

I love Native American basketry, and I have alot of them. I live in a decent sized apartment and I have them all over the place. I love the artistry that goes into them, the heart of the person making the basket is amazing. You can tell by looking at a finished basket just how much love and heart was placed into it. Yes, there were baskets that were made for the tourist trade and so the baskets they were selling needed to be made quickly, so as to get as much money as possible. Basket making could make enough money to support whole families, including the elderly and the sick who could no longer work to help themselves.

But then there were the baskets that were not made for sale, they were made for the family to use or made for a celebration to gift to others from their reservations or others that came to visit and take part in the celebrations. Those are the ones that were meticulously made, with perfect precision. Those are the ones that I as a collector look for. And I look for baskets that just catch my eye the right way and I buy it. I buy for my collection and I have sold none of them, I intend to leave them to my son (he has been in the military for 15 years and is on deployment again right now). He has seen my collection many times when he comes home on leave and he always asks to see the "new editions". He sees in them what I do which is great. He does not just see a basket. He sees what goes into them and he knows how much time and heart and soul is there when the basket is finished. So, I have no trepidations about passing them to him. It will be his choice to sell if he wants to, but he has already showed me his favorites, most of which are in my curio cabinets to help keep them from dust and sunlight. That lets me know he plans to keep a good many of them :)

And yes, there are many baskets flooding the market. This has been going on for a very long time. Other peoples in other places see the money that Native Americans can get for their handmade work, and they want a part of that pie for themselves. There are many artists in other countries that make wonderful and beautiful baskets in their own right from Asia and Africa, just to name a couple. If I collected baskets from other countries I would definitely get a few from those places. There are other people however, that make baskets that look like they were made by Native American, and they say their basket was made by a Native American when it was not. They are able to sell to people that are not skilled yet in all the things they need to look for in Native American basketry (Which is diverse in it's own right) , and they buy those fakes. I did the same thing when I started my collection, I made some real doozies of mistakes. However I did start doing research a few months into my collecting, so I did not lose a whole bunch of money. I now am pretty good at getting the "real deal" and I find some really outstanding baskets in places like stores that sell things that other people have given to them that they no longer want.